Here are the Nordic Cleantech Open finalists!

The best early stage clean tech companies in the Nordic region will be presented at the Cleantech Venture Day in Lahti, Finland, 25-27 April.

The Nordic Cleantech Open is a business competition funded aiming to identify, upgrade and display the best early stage clean tech companies in the Nordic region each year.

Nearly 100 companies applied and the quality among the applicants was very high.

Among the jury members and mentors are representatives from business development and venture arms of companies such as 3M, Skanska, Veolia Environment, and Siemens as well as venture capital funds from the Nordics as well as China, USA, UK, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain and Switzerland.

Nordic Innovation is one of the funders and supporters of the competition.

Aquiloz is developing the next generation of wind power prediction and trading information system. The Aquiloz system use computational fluid dynamics - CFD models combined with both production forecasting, risk assessment and decision support tools. The system will deploy plug-ins and adaptors in order to be integrated with the customers’ existing systems.

Black Silicon Solar develops a nanotechnology process for improving silicon solar cells in a cost-efficient way. Focusing on cost reduction rather than improving efficiency Black Silicon Solar has developed an alternative texturing process that reduce production cost, production time, use of toxic chemicals and use of silicon.

MetGen is developing and producing oxidase enzymes called Laccases. MetGen’s Laccases can be used in a number of industrial processes. One example of use are wood pre-treatment in pulp and paper mills where Laccases give a 15%-20% reduction of the energy consumption.

Numcore has developed a solution that increases the recovery in froth flotation processes. The solution enables automatic control of froth properties leading to a significant increase in recovery. It creates a 3D-image of the flotation cell and accurately measures stiffness and thickness of the froth via conductivity measurements.

The innovation of Pegasor is a sensor for continuous fine particle concentration monitoring. Pegasor already has a market presence in the automotive industry. This market will grow rapidly in the next few years as well as the market for indoor air, outdoor air and stack emission monitoring that Pegasor will also commercialize solutions for.

Ultranat has developed and protected a unique method for processing ash. The method enables ash from biomass fuel power plants to be processed into valuable products. The micronutrients are separated and used for fertilizers and animal feed. The remaining parts, i.e. the body part of ash, consists of purified silicate fractions, which have several applications.

The flame free catalytic combustion in ReformTech’s unique catalytic heaters provides several advantages such as high fuel efficiency without any dangerous emissions. Among other advantages with this exciting technology is the possibility to use different fuels, a directionally controllable heat radiation, low costs and robust performance.

Tomologic offers a scalable optimization service online that benefits customers through cost savings without the need of any user interaction and initial investments. Tomologic has developed a technology that optimize sheet metal cutting. The process reduces scrap from raw material in this energy intensive industry up to 50%.

Vasasensor’s thin sensor units enable optimization of production processes during full speed. This is a solution for the needs of the paper industry to better control dewatering in the press section of the paper machines. Only 1% more efficient dewatering in the press leads to 4% increased production or 4% less steam consumption.

Zemission’s product is a multi-fuel, zero emission burner system for heating systems in Electric and Hybrid vehicles. Due to the absence of heat from a combustion engine, heating the interior of these is a problem. Electrical heating reduces the driving range of up to 50%. The Zemission burner is outstanding for this application. It does not reduce the range, it is silent, and it is Zero Emission.